Just eight days before the start of college football season, BYU has made big changes to the structure of the athletics department, removing football and head coach Kalani Sitake from athletics director Brian Santiago’s purview and placing the program under the supervision of a university vice president.
According to Deseret News, Sitake will now report to Keith Vorkink, vice president of advancement. Santiago also reports to Vorkink and will continue to oversee all other athletics programs at BYU.
“Given today’s dynamic athletics landscape,” Vorkink said, “we feel it’s important to be providing more administrative support, not less. We’ve made recent hires with that in mind, and we’re also organizing in ways that we believe will support BYU’s world-class programs.”
The restructure comes after Sitake has voiced frustration and concern for months at the lack of resources allocated to the Cougars football team.
Sitake said his team “has been given the challenge of doing the most with the least," later adding, "I still want more resources for these guys,” and he will “fight like crazy” to make BYU a premier program.
Sitake’s comments, and lack of comment regarding Santiago, have left many fans and student-athletes with the impression that tension has been brewing in the athletics department for some time.
While football is now separated from the 20 remaining varsity sports, BYU leaders said this move does not indicate a return to the department’s previous structure, which saw separate athletics directors for men’s and women’s teams.
The move is also in line with restructuring occurring at several other universities across the country. Stanford’s new athletics director was the former CEO of Nike, and the University of South Florida completely restructured the hierarchy of its department to include a CEO position and chief business officer, rather than additional athletics directors.
“It is crucial to remember that everything we do in athletics at BYU to compete in this dynamic, ever-changing landscape, will be done in a way that aligns the athletic department with the mission of the university,” Sitake said. “That is always our overarching objective.“
